I love April Fools. I think it is because of my mischievous side. I have played many a joke on friends on this day and sat back and watched them fall hook, line and sinker for my made up stories. In the end there was much laughter and it was good and harmless. I immediately start thinking of the next year. Laughter makes the soul dance!
Our world is so serious and there is reason. What is funny about violence, war, hatred, bigotry, division? Nothing at all for sure. One might think why do we waste a day on such foolishness that could be spent on justice? I wonder what would happen if we walked up to someone who was committing acts of violence, war, hatred, bigotry or division and laughed at them or waved ribbons, sang songs around them, rode on unicycles, honked clown horns. I wonder what they would do?
This past Sunday our Palm Sunday celebration was an expression of just that. Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a colt surrounded by disciples and children waving branches and singing Hosannah. And Jesus rode up to the Romans in the most April foolish of ways silently mocking their huge chariot drawn army parades as shows of might. The Romans must have looked with utter disbelief at what seemed like this pathetic army attempting to invade Jerusalem.
But for Jesus, this journey was no joke, no prank. It was an attempt to make the Roman authorities in occupied Jerusalem hopefully look at the way they were treating God’s people. Jesus felt the touch of God through the waters of the Jordan watershed, hearing the words “beloved” placed upon him, hearing the echoes of Joshua leading people into the promised land. This was in the heart I am sure of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem that day. This is what lays in my heart as I encounter God’s people…how to help people find love and acceptance and peace from a world that often ignores them. This is certainly no joke…but by times we must employ the absurd to lay bare the absurdity of our world.
So maybe today we can honor the creative side of the church for not only the theologians can make us stop and think. I think of the poets, the protest song writers, banner makers, a powerful group called the Carnivale de Resistance (Carnival of Resistance), the liturgical dancers, those who do clowning, puppetry to name a few. And together as church, we laugh and sing and speak truth and joyfully dance in the face of injustice. And so as we begin this day my prayer is this:
O Holy One,
as Christians we are called to be a carnival of resistance,
to dig deep, to lay bare, to uncover, to expose all that suppresses the child of God within us.
May we know ourselves as your beloved daughters and sons this day,
May we help others to discover the same within them.
We ask this in the name of Jesus, justice for all. Amen!
